Alexis Hoag-Fordjour

Biography

Alexis Hoag-Fordjour is the inaugural David Dinkins ’56 Professor and a Dean’s Research Scholar. She teaches and writes in criminal law and procedure, evidence, and abolition, and co-directs the Center for Criminal Justice. A nationally recognized expert in indigent defense, Hoag-Fordjour's scholarship focuses on criminal procedure, particularly the right to counsel, and how race and ethnicity have shaped the jurisprudence. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York University Law Review (twice), Michigan Law Review, Boston University Law Review, Fordham Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, Yale Law Journal Forum, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and others. She regularly provides trainings to federal and state defender organizations.

During the 2024-2025 school year, Hoag-Fordjour was selected as the inaugural scholar-in-residence at the Constitutional Accountability Center. She now serves on their board, as well as on the boards of the Abolitionist Law Center, the Death Penalty Information Center, and the Eighth Amendment Project, and is a member of the Reform Leadership Council at Vera Institute of Justice. A legal contributor for CNN, Hoag-Fordjour provides on-air analysis for MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, NPR, CBS, and other media outlets. In 2021, she was elected to membership in the American Law Institute.

Prior to joining the Law School, Hoag-Fordjour served as the inaugural practitioner-in-residence at the Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil & Political Rights at Columbia University, and as a lecturer at Columbia Law School. She spent more than a decade as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, primarily representing capitally convicted clients in federal post-conviction proceedings, with the  NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Nashville, Tennessee. Hoag-Fordjour graduated from Yale University and NYU School of Law, where she was a Derrick Bell Public Interest Scholar. She served as a law clerk for the late Judge John T. Nixon of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.